28 June 2009

Bric-a-brac

I admire Alexandre Dumas. I have been intruiged and inspired by The Three Musketeers and, especially, The Count of Monte Cristo. Dumas was a Romanticist, and when I started reading him my own writing and interest and world view wasn't anything of the sort.

It is a quality of great fiction that I could be enlightened so much about character and concepts such as honor, humility, respect, devotion, duty, determination, faith, pride.

I could say more about these aspects, but I think Dumas's works speak for themselves.

I only wish I was fluent in French.

On a very different level, I don't think I've come across anyone in modern literature that reveals character as masterfully as Elmore Leonard, and his lean prose makes me intolerant of more fatty and schmaltzy writing.

And I'm growing weary of sentences that start with "and". Sentences that are incomplete. Because it's daring and only a master would flaunt breaking the rules.

And one-sentence paragraphs.

For impact.

As for "Not Knowing", here is an excellent quote from Thomas Jefferson:

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

Also, I re-read part of Feynman's The Pleasure of Finding Things Out and felt embarassed for my blog's title -- Feynman is far more lucid and enlightening. Some day I will write a more formal post/essay about it.

"3:10 To Yuma", Get Shorty, Be Cool, Cuba Libre, Valdez Is Coming -- much more. Very prolific. He writes crime and Westerns. I think he was born in the 1920s and he's still writing. You'd probably enjoy the Westerns better (Valdez Is Coming I really want to read, and I'll loan it to you when I'm through with it).

I have noticed sentences starting with "And" in Dumas. It's not a new thing. I start a sentence that way from time to time. It really only annoys me when it's supposed to add impact to weak writing. And then it happened.